What Good Company Does

I’ve been thinking about the effect of good company. Not the dramatic, life-changing conversation kind — the ordinary kind. The Wednesday lunch with someone who makes you feel like yourself. The phone call that doesn’t need to cover anything important but leaves you lighter. The person who just gets it, whatever it is, without you having to explain much.

We underestimate how much of our mood, our energy, our sense of what’s possible is shaped by who we’re spending time with. Not in a calculated way — it just happens. Good company is its own kind of nutrition. And bad company — or just the wrong company, people who drain rather than restore — is its own kind of depletion.

Wednesday check-in question, slightly different today: who have you spent time with lately? Is that company filling you up or slowly draining you? And what, if anything, do you want to do about that?

Good company is its own kind of nutrition. Choose it deliberately.

Who’s someone whose company consistently leaves you feeling better? When did you last spend time with them?